The Darkest Depths of Light
by funeral flowers
Summary: "My break’s up… here, add that to my tab and have it yourself… I’ll talk to you later on." "Here’s to you, my friends… wherever you are. Here’s to you…" Rod Stewart songfic. One-shot. "Better off Dead" PG13 for suicide and slash. WARNING


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Disclaimer: Everything here is not mine. I do not own Harry Potter™ or "Better Off Dead", which is Rod Stewart's.

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Author's Note: This is a little idea I got watching Cheers believe it or not. Well, it's set a little after the good side won the war (they just _have _to!) and is, believe it or not, a one-shot. And it is one-sided Hermione/Ginny, and it's in third person for once. I just got tired of first persons…

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The Darkest Depths of Light

By: Endless Rain

The place was dismal and decrepit, often described as nondescript. No one really cared about the little bar in a darkened alley before or even during the war, but now, afterwards, it was filled with people staring into their friend's faces in the rickety old place. It had a bar and some tables, everything was wood, and there was an upright piano in the back. A woman of about twenty-nine was scrubbing the mahogany counter at the rundown saloon, and, by the looks of it, was quite down on her luck. She was thinking, which accounted for the lack of work she had done. She wondered if she could have made something out of her life. Before the war started she was an upper middle-class Londoner, well brought up, polite, and smart. She had been the smartest in her year at a wizard school called Hogwarts. She had been in Gryffindor, too.

The woman looked around at the grubby faces. Did she recognize them? Whenever it was her shift she looked around constantly, hoping one of the faces made her do a double take, hoping she knew that face. But no. She never saw any person she remembered. Once or twice she thought she knew someone, but it turned out to be someone else completely. Lack of luck had brought hard times upon this woman; she knew the meaning of poor and down on her luck. Yes, she knew them well. She had been begging those low titles to bring her out of the slums she was at then. Yes, the war tore apart many families and friends. It had been years since it had ended, and she had no idea whether or not any of them were even still alive. This woman had survived by the skin of her teeth, losing her pride and dignity to stay alive. She even killed a man with her bare hands, a brutal beating.

"I'm going to use the washroom, cover for me, please," she said as she took of her apron and hung it up. The small blonde nodded her head and refilled someone's beer mug for the sixth time. The woman looked in the mirror and examined her face. It was too wrinkled and gray for someone her age. But considering the war… well, it had ended seven years ago. She sighed and sat down on the floor, her back to the wall. She stared at the ceiling, chipping wallpaper absentmindedly with her fingernails. She sniffed and ran a hand over her dirty face and through her hair. It was still bushy and brown like it had always been. She got up and washed her face and took a moment to stare at herself, into her brown eyes and then into the sink. She washed her hands, dried them, opened the door and found herself face to face with another woman, who looked as old as she felt. She apologized and headed back to the bar, re-tying her apron.

The woman mixed a few drinks and stared into a few of her own. Someone began banging out a tune on the ratty old piano. A few men said some bawdy things to her and the woman immediately felt sorry for the girl on the piano. She had gotten into the habit of forgetting the people she once knew, and now hardly remembered their faces, but maybe, she hoped she could run into them someday. The girl got up, her low cut dress almost embarrassing to the woman at the bar, walked over to the bar, her head low, and ordered in a mumble.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" The woman asked. The girl lifted her head and the woman's heart began beating rapidly. Whoever she was, she was beautiful.

"Dry gin." The girl had red hair and green eyes, which reminded the woman of a girl she had tried to forget. Her voice was so much like hers too. Even her disposition. But it couldn't be her. She looked so age worn, so tired… but then again, so was she. The brown haired woman poured her a glass and slid it across the bar. She looked at the pretty girl and smiled as she downed the glass of clear liquid in a few seconds. She busied herself with tracing the rim of the glass and the woman decided to speak.

"So, I guess you were hired to play piano, eh?"

"Yes, this is my first night. Another shot." The woman obliged and looked at the mysterious redhead.

"You're pretty good."

"Thanks." She took a drink; savored it, then swallowed it. The woman smiled and then the redhead's eyes burned like an emerald flame.

"Hermione?" She sounded so afraid, so gentle; so timid. The woman's nostrils flared.

"Who needs to know?" She scoffed, and seeing the downcast expression on the redhead's face, she nodded. "Yes, that's my name… what's yours?" It looked like, for a second, that the redhead was going to say something other than what she said.

"Angelina."

"I knew an Angelina once… captain of the Quidditch team in my House at Hogwarts." Hermione said, pouring herself a shot of whiskey and downing it quickly, the burn satisfactory. Angelina motioned for another shot herself, and Hermione poured, and the girl swirled the shotglass around the counter. She ran a hand through her hair and looked at her watch.

"My break's up… here, add that to my tab and have it yourself… I'll talk to you later on." Angelina got up and walked to the piano, and as Hermione watched her walk she downed the glass.

"Here's to you, my friends… wherever you are. Here's to you…" The girl's voice carried over to Hermione.

"_Call the girls and dress up fine. Tonight I felt like suicide. Roll them dice and pour the wine. Shuffle them cards and deal them fine. Got nobody to kiss tonight. Nothing to lose but my appetite…"_

- - -

The next night Hermione walked from her car and into the little tavern and the girl whose shift ended before hers headed out. Hermione grabbed her white apron and tied it on herself, her eyes roving the room. Sure as the nose on her face, there Angelina was, banging the old ivory and ebony; singing the same song that she sang the night before. Hermione listened as it started, pouring a few drinks and humming to herself. She never had much of a voice; it was always off-key and tended to break. She remembered the pitiful Christmas carols she and two of her friends used to sing…

"_Wanna be silly and sing and shout. Gotta get legless and fall about. Turn the music up nice and loud. Cheer me up don't bring me down. Gonna lose my job next week. Getting replaced by a silicone chip…"_

Hermione hummed as she bounced around the bar, serving drinks and drinking some herself until it was a bit past midnight and some of the crowds cleared, and only a few drunkards still inhabited the sorry excuse for a bar. Angelina made her way over to Hermione. I don't know, Hermione thought, something about her strikes me… I remember her from someplace. Angelina sat down and ordered a dry gin and the two were in silence for awhile. Her shift ended at midnight and a man walked in and she was free. As she got ready to leave, she took one look at Angelina's gaunt and sorrowful face that she turned around and ordered herself a scotch.

"Hello, Angelina," Hermione said, staring into her glass. Angelina looked at the bushy haired girl and gave her a slight smile.

"Hello, Hermione, is it?" Her eyes betrayed her question, they knew, and they knew well.

"Yes, it is," the woman replied, abandoning her drink and turning on her barstool to look at Angelina. She cleared her throat and Angelina looked up. "So, Angelina… how old are you?"

"I'm twenty-eight." She stared into the depths of darkness in her glass of brandy. It was the third thing she had ordered that night. Hermione finally noticed how lost Angelina looked.

"I'm twenty-nine, though I look much older… the war was pretty hard on all of us."

"Yes, indeed. I lost all my brothers in the war, and my mother was just killed in an attack… and I don't know where my father is," then Angelina gave a strangled look, as if she had given out too much information. Hermione reached over, patted her hand, and noticed the sad, hungry look in Angelina's eyes, and she knew she'd seen it somewhere else before, be it the looks of other recruits, or someone she knew well. Maybe it was in the sad gray eyes of the people in the streets, yes, the war had down turned everyone. Hermione blinked away some tears as a vision of her friend's younger sister danced before her eyes.

"You look like someone I once knew," she said, studying Angelina carefully.

"That's because I'm not Angelina." The redhead murmured. Tears nested in the green eyes of Hermione's late night bar companion. "I'm that person. I'm Ginny, Hermione. I'm Ginny." Hermione grew angry.

"Why'd you do that? Why'd you lie to me?"

"I was hurt you didn't recognize me!"

"You're so different, Ginny!" Tears streaked her soiled face and she was embraced by the redhead. "What happened to us? We were so promising, and we could have done anything we wanted to… we could have had the world."

"We grew up… and we fought a war."

"And won."

"Doesn't seem like it."

"Well, for the most part, no. But sometimes… Oh, Ginny!" There was a stab at Hermione's heart, and suddenly she found herself sobbing. It took her a couple of tries to speak. "Your brothers! Ron died?"

"Yes, they're all gone… but I'm still in touch with Harry. He wants to see you." Ginny was avoiding the subject like a nervous child around a growing flame.

"Oh, God!" Hermione hid her face in her hands, elbows pressing hard into the wood, brown curls spilling over her skeletal fingers. "They're all gone!"

"I know, I know, baby…" Ginny rubbed Hermione's back and Hermione looked up, her face blotchy and red.

"Ginny, _what has become of us?"_ Hermione yelled. "We're scum. You're going around in dresses cut so low you expose half of each breast, and you play such vulgar songs… And I feed the drunken fire of every drunken man who stumbles in here, and they probably go out and molest people and beat their wives…"

"Shh, Hermione…" Ginny hugged Hermione and kissed the top of her head.

"I'm going to die alone and cold and miserable." Hermione sobbed, and Ginny continued to supply comfort like towels to someone drenched in rain.

"No, no you're not. It's thoughts like those that that send even the best people to live in Hell."

"It's true!"

"No, no it isn't." And Ginny pulled Hermione to her and pressed her lips against hers. Hermione stared at the redhead in awe; her crying stopped. She immediately got up and collected her things, pressing money on the counter and shutting her pocketbook. She took one last pained look at Ginny and breezed out of the bar. Ginny was left staring at Hermione as she left and picked up the girl's abandoned drink and poured it down her throat. "Here's to you, Hermione. Here's to you…"

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I might have been a hero  
But I chose to stay in bed  
I might have been prime minister  
but right now honey I'm better off dead.

I might have been a hero  
But I chose to stay in bed  
I might have been prime minister  
but right now honey I'm better off dead.

There was a notice the next day that Hermione Granger had quit her job at The Black Dragon Pub. The piano player, Ginny Weasley, kept on playing the piano, usually the same song again and again until the drinkers complained and cursed at her. Ginny would never stop playing though, for it was the song she had played when first saw Hermione. Maybe it would bring her back.

"_Don't like the scenery don't like the set. Tear it all down and start again. Man keeps talking on the radio, telling me what I don't wanna know. Radiation wars and layatril. If tax don't get ya then cancer will."_ After a month of playing that song and Hermione didn't come back, Ginny didn't show up for work. She was found a week later, dead in her apartment, blood all down her front and smeared on her breasts. She was wearing nothing but a low cut dress and a pair of three-inch pumps. It was her first attempt at suicide, and she had succeeded. Engraved already in her leg were the initials H.G. and no one but she and H.G. knew who that was.

A month after hearing the news, Hermione took up piano and learned how to play one song, her voice crackling hour after hour at a small Irish pub. Her voice was often heard ringing throughout the streets, and it was a sad voice as it always was, and everyone pitied the girl in the low-cut dresses whom weeped for her lost friend, as the story went.

"_I might have been a hero. But I chose to stay in bed. I might have been Prime Minister but right now honey I'm better off dead."_ And dead was how she was found a few weeks ago, lying in her bathtub. Must have drowned herself. Poor girl, rumor was that in the wizarding world she was a clever girl, but got mixed up in the wrong sort of things after a close friend's untimely passing. She was alone during that entire winter when she ended her life.

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I might have been a hero  
But I chose to stay in bed  
I might have been prime minister  
but right now honey I'm better off dead  
  
Better off dead, better off dead  
Better off dead, better off dead

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End file.
